C3PX

I wasn't basing my post on any EU retcons. I didn't even know there was such an EU retcon. Since I had first seen the film, long before reading a lick of EU, I had always assumed that is what was going on. I don't think Luke's careful concentration is simply there to indicate that he is trying to be as quiet as a mouse so Vader doesn't hear him.

Of course, I am sure if you watched the documentary the same guy did about Bush, you'd be inclinded to believe every word of it.

I also think the above documentary is a complete load of crap. But be sure you don't believe what you believe simply because it is what you want to believe. Is this a case of letting your hero only be reduced to a degree you are willing to reduce him too (i.e. "I can say that most of it was crap. I do agree with the movie on some things...)? Is the only reason the harsher accusations against the guy are crap in your opinion because they simply cannot be true based on the loan merit that the guy is Obama?

Janskeet said:

I know they're just B-movies, well the prequels anyways, but this always bugged me.

You may wish to look up the definition of "B-movie".

I always thought Luke was using the force to block Vader out. Notice Luke is concentrating really hard. Vader finally picks up on his thoughts about his sister, I always assumed that was because Luke wasn't strong enough in the force and Vader was able to see through his fog just enough to pick up that little tidbit, likely because Luke was worried about Leia at the moment and thinking too much about her and what it would be like for her if he failed.

Vaderisnothayden said:

If da Vinci came back from the dead now and started fucking with the Mona Lisa, people wouldn't be happy. Unlike the unfinished Mona Lisa, the supposedly unfinished OOT was released to the public as if it was a finished work. Also, the OOT was embraced by the public in the years before Lucas's revision, whereas the Mona Lisa was not embraced by the public before da Vinci  finished it. In effect, Lucas gave the OOT to the world. Once given, it cannot rightly be taken back.

Dude, if da Vinci came back from the dead now, his fucking with the Mona Lisa would be the least of my concerns! I'd be geniunely freaked out.

Are you suggesting that the only way we will ever get the OOT would be to reconstruct it from the DVDs/future Blu-rays of the SE? Because that isn't happening. There is too much footage missing. And the 04 DVDs are incredibly messed up. Since LFL made the claim that they were intentially messed up as a creative decision, I suspect they will perpetuate their continual messed uppedness.

And I am not sure what you mean by needed to accept the GOUT. I am probably on a completely misunderstanding you, so don't take it the wrong way when I say that we absolutely don't have to accept the GOUT. It is unacceptable. It looks fine enough on old technology, which works for me because I tend to prefer keeping antiques around the house and saving my money (i.e. ten years from now I might have an HD TV, if I find one in the trash or if someone sells me their old one on the cheap), but for anyone using modern technology, the things are way, way, way below standard, and not just by today's standards, they were way below the standards of five years before their release. Far from needing to accept them, we need to take them into the backyard and pee on them.

Of course, I imagine you meant that we need to accept the fact that they are the best official release we will ever get. In this case, you may well be right, but I think there will be a better release down the road. My prediction is that eventually we will see a Blu-ray release of the OOT following the DVD standards of today, or a few years ago. This will of course be pretty freaking awesome, just as the GOUT was awesome in its own severly belated way, but it will once again be too little too late as well as a very transparent attempt at keeping the OOT looking like a second hand VHS tape in comparison to the SE.

Finally watched Attack of the Federation. Good work. It was a decent edit, and you had some very clever ideas. Still had too high of a dose of Jar Jar and Gungans for my liking. Many Jar Jar antic I wouldn't have hesitated to cut were still intact, but that is just me. I would go on to watch the other too, I even went through the effort of setting up a linkshare account, only to discover I had to donate or post twenty times to get them, and decided to hang it. Perhaps I will acquire it through other means.

I really thought the Sidious identity bit worked great. I liked the idea of blacking out his face.

Good post DF. The fact of the matter is, you can't please everyone. And if you try you are just going to make a mess. From what I understand, Lucas changed the course of the PT on multiple occasions to appease fans, and as a result we have an uneven trilogy. Fans get rather... fanatical, they want all sorts of things that might sound like a cool idea in their head, but end up being an awful idea in the end. It is the creators job to put the foot down and say, these are MY movies, I'M making them, you just sit back and watch them when I'm done, or don't.

George has proven himself perfectly able to say such things to fans, if fact it is what he always says. But then his actions often show that he goes back on what he said in order to conform to public opinion on the matter.

No Star Wars on DVD until after Episode 3 is out, he went back on it. No original trilogy, he went back on it (in a very halfassed kind of way). I suppose, this sort of liquid spined behavior should be comforting, as it is the sort of thing that may possibly get us the OT on DVD.

skyjedi2005 said:

Right.  I bet there will be lines down the street for Red Tales: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen.

It will be as big as a hit as howard the duck, willow, tucker, radioland murders, more american graffiti or the star wars holiday special.

How many of those were actually directed by George? I still think if he hadn't veered off into the ditch of infinite Star Wars, he would have continued to kick ass as a film maker for quite sometime. He had the right attitude going for him, and by the time he made the first Star Wars film, he certainly had the respect and recognition.

Seems George hit a fork in the road in his career. One direction said, "Business Man" the other said, "Film Maker". I am of the belief that when art becomes all about money and not about the art itself, then there is little chance it will strike that chord that made people line up around movie theaters bad in 1977. Sure, SW 1999, 2002, and 2005 all had people lining up around theaters, but that is due to the resonance of SW 1977.

WE are the fans who do such things. This community has made some impressive attempts, but we are very limited with poor quality source material. Nothing, and I mean nothing we can possibly make will ever amount to anything LFL could make. Not because we don't have the will to do it, but because we don't have the sources or the technology.

Countless manhours have been put into these efforts already, you can find them in old threads on this site, but quite honestly, the GOUT, as pathetic as it is, looks better than the vast majority of them, if not every single one of them. Maybe someday some fan will come along with the means to pull off something really fantastic, but I don't have my hopes up about it. Anything really worthwhile will come out of official channels.

Note to George: Hey, George, how 'bout them artsy films you've been talking about for so long? Any chance of forgetting Star Wars and working on those? Please...

Exactly 25.

Those cheapy collapsibles are fantastic! You can play really rough with them and they hold up great, when they finally do give out they don't cost a lot to replace. I have two or three of the things lying around somewhere. Me and a couple of my friends use to really go at it with those things. One of them always insisted his $30 Hasbro lightsaber with lights and sound that ran on batteries was sooooo much better than our cheap $8 ones. Then one day whilst dueling with one of us his freakin' blade snapped off! It was the funniest thing. Next time I saw him he had replaced it with a cheapy.

Once I saw the neighbor kids jousting with the things while riding their bikes. One kid somehow managed to accidentally jam his own lightsaber into his bike spokes while riding at a pretty fast speed. Flipped his bike, threw him off, bent some of his spokes, and the lightsaber came out of it with just a few deep scratches in the plastic, but still as study as ever.

These were the ones that came out after Episode I was released. I noticed they still sell them in stores, but now with more colors and a few new hilts (when they first came out they only had green ones with Qui-Gon style hilts), don't know if the new ones are as destruction proof as those ones were.

Oops, back on topic now...

Sluggo said:

You just wave your hand at them and say in a calm voice, "I am not a freak. Move along."

That works then, eh? I'll have to start doing that from now on. Lol.

doubleofive said:

  14. Wave your hand and pretend you are using the force when walking up to an automatic door.

Every.  Single.  Time.

Phew! Glad I am not the only one. Was kind of afraid I might be some sort of freak. ;) Those weird looks I get from the Wal-Mart greeters make me uncertain of myself.

Wow, Baronlando, that was perfect! Lol. Far, far more fitting than "whore".

14. Wave your hand and pretend you are using the force when walking up to an automatic door.

Sluggo said:

I think whore is a strong word.  Maybe a business man with a product to sell would be more appropriate.  I don't agree with his business plan, but I don't think he is a whore. 

I agree, that is a very strong word to use for the guy, and it fits him in no way whatsoever!

You might be able to get away with calling him a pimp, as he is whoring out his franchise. I am sure I have used that one as an analogy before myself, but just as that, an analogy, not an insult.

He is a business man. I have great respect for business men. Some of them are dogs, and some of them are decent people, but they are what makes the world go round.

No, I cannot blame George for this, it is his right. I am sure I'd do the same thing if I were him. Sure, it pisses off some fans to see something they love being spread so thin over every cereal asle and toy section of every store, but it makes even more fans happy. To some fans, being able to buy a Darth Tater Mr. Potato head is a dream come true, to others, the very existence of that toy is offensive. This stuff doesn't bother me so much, George is getting rich because of it, and it is all due to his business savvy. Who can honestly fault him for that? Anyone who calls him a whore for that, is very likely in turn showing themselves to be a lover of whores, unless they can prove themselves not to be in possession of any of the countless things marketed and produced by business men.

The only thing I can truely fault ol' George for is the attitude represented in Vaderisnohayden's post. It annoys me to no end. Especially coming from the guy who spoke out against film coloration (something of which I truely agreed with him about). The other thing I can fault George for is the prequels, he obviously didn't give a lick about them, and put about as much care into writing and directing them as I put into scrubbing my own toilets. The prequels could have been quite a treat for the fans, but rather ended up being a quick buck. He could have much just about as much from them by hiring writers and directors who actually cared about them, but no sense lamenting this now.

Also, if George wanted to make money off the OOT, he would have done so by now (and actually, he did with the GOUT). I believe he is at the point where he doesn't care so much about what money could come from the OOT, he is much more interested in the things he was quoted saying in Vaderisnohayden's post. I am quite confident we will never see a proper restoration of the OOT as long as George is alive. Even if there are future releases of the original trilogy, I am certain there will always be some excuse for them to be subpar to the quality standard of the day.

TheBoost said:

Isn't he President of the Galaxy in the EU now or something.

Wow, I really, really, really hope that was a joke.

Vaderisnothayden said:

I don't hold views if I think they're wrong. If I think I'm mistaken about something then I won't argue it.

You think other people don't feel that same way? Why would anyone hold a view they think is wrong? If someone says that a certain view is wrong, then quite obviously, they don't hold it.

Why would anyone argue something, if they felt they were mistaken? The whole point of arguing is because you think you are right and the other person is wrong. There is a place for some debate, but when it becomes clear you're not convincing anybody, it is time to fuck off and agree to disagree. You tend to press it to the point of, "Well clearly you are wrong because you suck at this, and I am quite good at it" or "You're wrong and only arrive at your point of view because you are suffering from denial".

Sometimes it is prudent to consider the possibility that you might just be wrong, or at the very least that your view isn't as water tight as you thought it was.

Vaderisnohayden, my sincerest apologies for mis-spelling "hare-brained".

And I wasn't suggesting your ideas were hare-brained because they differed from my own. I suggested they were hare-brained simply because they were hare-brained.

As I already said, I am finished with this nonsense.

I think it is more the writers mis-remembering. Hurley said he had seen the movie so many times he had it memorized. Or you could brush it off as one of Hurley's improvements to the story. As he said he was making improvements. I don't remember Chewie throwing his "fury" arm up in victory after blowing up the spy robot thingy. 

Yup. Just for kids.

DarkFather said:

 

C3PX said:

 

Stop trying to psycho analyze us to prove your point. 

 

Sorry about that. I think the little guy learned it from me.

I doubt it. He is fully capable of it on his own. Either way, at least when you play doctor your analzes are semi-applicable. He just does it to undermine.

TheBoost said:

It's odd to me how many people prefer "Sad Flautists" to "Yub Yub."

Without commenting on their musical worth, does that mean the Special Editions really aren't disliked philisophically. I mean, is it fine for Lucas to frak with his films, as long as we like the results?

Not at all. It is really important to make that point. Not at all!

I mentioned before I didn't mind the SE, I thought it was kind of cool when it first came out, mostly because it was awesome to see SW on the big screen again.

I have no problem with director's cuts or special editions. What I do have a problem with are when the DC or SE makes an attempt to erase the original and not only become the definitive, but become the only one. Which is what GL did with SW. This happened with Blade Runner before too. For the longest time the DC was the only one available. While I felt the DC was an improvement over the original, several of the changes I did not like. Since the original was on LD and the only DVD of the director's cut was a very poor transfer that came out at the dawn of DVD, it bother me a bit, but not too much. Obviously that whole BR issue has been remedied in a fantastic way by now.

I also prefer the theatrical versions of Alien and Alien 3, but the existence of the DC of both of those doesn't bother me in the least.

In the same way, I was not in the least bothered by the SEs, back in the days of VHS, when both versions had equal grounding. Today that is not the case, and it bothers me.

My opinion that the new music is an improvement over Yub Nub (not so much because I love the new music, but because Yub Nub was awful) is just that. An opinion. If GL said he was going to release the originals in perfect Blu-ray stardards, but was going to keep the lone SE change of the ROTJ ending music (sans the other planets), I might actual enjoy that version of the film personally. But I would be here crying foul with everyone else, because I want the original preserved.

So no! It is not okay when we approve of the change, it is still just as wrong as when we disprove. I think you will find my attitude on this to be shared by many of the other members here as well. We are about preservation, not about only wanted the changes WE want. That would be extremely hypocritical.

Vaderisnothayden said:

You are not going to be convinced as long as you refuse to accept ROTJ as what it was and refuse to accept that it works by other rules than the logic you try to force it to fit to. And I'm not even trying to convince you. I'm merely explaining my view. Have whatever view you like. I am just expressing and defend my view.

I am through with this discussion. Reading some of your hair brained bullcrap is really beginning to insult my intelligence, and I really don't care that much about the subject at hand to go around in circles about it anyway.

I see nothing at the end of the film to indicate a definite end. Absolutely nothing. You've failed to show me anything. You have yet to offer anything other than odd reasoning to defend your side. The fact is, at the end of the film there is still a big fleet out there. I am not trying to force the movie to follow my adult form of logic that it doesn't follow. I am not trying to force it to be an adult movie and not a kids movie all the while suffering from denial as you have decided I have. Just because it is a kids movie doesn't mean it has to toss out every inch of reason. That is great that you think it does. Bravo. You seem to be a very well grounded individual.

Anyway, time to end this pointlessness now. Anything else you say on this subject will not be getting a response from me. Why? Because you are saying the same damn thing over and over again, only in longer and longer posts. Having to read longer posts of the same thing, then having you add in about my denial issues isn't going to change my mind about this, it is just going to try my patience.

Also, you totally missed my whole thing with The Hobbit too, I was comparing Smug to the Death Star and Vader and Palps, the immediate threats. And the orc army to the Imperials. At the end of the book the orcs are still out there, a threat to peace and freedom on the people of Middle-Earth, but not an immediate threat. That is the same way I feel about ROTJ. The Imperials are still out there, still a threat to peace and freedom in the galaxy, but not an immediate threat. Which is why to me, being someone going down the path of nuttiness and denial that I am (according to you anyway), both the The Hobbit and ROTJ can end on a happy note without lying to kids and trying to convince them the world is now perfect just because there are happy moments.

Anyway, none of this really matters.

Vaderisnothayden said:

You guys are trying to read ROTJ as a realistic adult film that makes a priority out of logic. It wasn't that. It was a kids' fairytale with a happily ever after ending that implied the conflict was over. I think you want ROTJ to be that realistic adult film, so you can't accept that it wasn't and thus won't let yourself see the message the fairytale ending gave. No offense, but I think you guys are in denial about being fans of a kids' thing. I've seen this sort of attitude before, in fans of the original Doctor Who show, who tried to compensate for the fact that they were fans of a kids' show.

C3PX said:

And by cold hard evidence, I do not mean things like, "it is an illogical fantasy story, and instantly ending the Empire is illogical, therefore that was the original intention".

No offense, but that is just a really, really lousy argument. You can take my word for it, I am not in denial about being a fan of some kids movie. That isn't even an issue here. Stop trying to psycho analyze us to prove your point. 

It is a fantasy story, which allows for some degree of illogical things to take place. That doesn't by default require that all logic be thrown out the window. Again, I see nothing in the original ROTJ that indicates the Empire was completely finished after the battle of Endor.

And while the post of Zombie's you quoted has some excellent points, I must respectfully disagree with it. I see no reason why the "Happily Ever After" ending is incompatible with there still being more of the enemy out there. The Hobbit has a very "And they all lived happily ever after" sort of ending to it, and yet we'd be dumb to think that once the dragon was defeated, and the hoards of orcs were beat back, that it had to mean they were all gone for good in order to have the happy ending that it had. And yes, The Hobbit is very much a children's book, I am aware of that, and I am not in any sort of denial on that front.

Also, what is this, "emotional message" of which you speak? What makes you so positive the emotional message is what you believe it to be? I suppose the emotional message you speak of would be the Rebel's partying it up like it was 1999 on Endor with their teddy bear pals. I have a hard time taking any emotional message that prattles on about celebrating the love and what not seriously, but I still feel the celebration is more than warranted considering they just blew up the Imperial superweapon and killed both the Empires two highest leaders, as well as a whole slew of the Imperial Navy's best and brightest. I'd be partying it up if I were in their shoes as well. Who cares if the Empire is still out there, the day is won in a very big way.

Janskeet said:

In ROTS, he turns from being a pretty typical human being into a sick, twisted, sadistic, madman within a couple of days, perhaps even hours.

Days? Hours? Try within a couple of seconds, perhaps even minutes.

Now I agree with DarkFather and Confused Matthew. Anakin was a pretty twisted individual from AOTC onward. He was depicted as a creepy obsessive stalker type in his expressions of love for Pandabear, and when he killed a whole villiage of Tuskens, it only confirmed our suspictions that this guy not only needed some professional help, but he also needed to be locked up.

However his transition from that strange twisted freak whom everyone strangely seemed to love so much and seemed happy to accept despite of his severe issues, to the guy who goes around killing halflings and choking his wife to death was painfully abrupt. There is nothing there to indicate the passage of hours or days. In the course of a few minutes, "Palpatine, he is the Sith Lord. We've got to stop him." to "To take that Shaft!" to "What have I done?" to "I pledge myself to you." to "Alright, if it must be done, then it must be done. So, where are these small kids you need me to murder?"

Akwat Kbrana said:

Are you seriously suggesting that the deaths of the Emperor and Vader and the destruction of the Death Star would result in the pacifying of every other Imperial V.I.P.? They're all just going to lay down their arms and sing "kumbaya, my lord" and allow the Alliance to fill the power vacum uncontested? That's just asinine.

No. No. No. No. NO. Of course not! That would just be absurd! They'd be singing "Yub Nub" of course.